Predator - NES

In 1987 a game of such quality was released that it would change the world forever...or not.

You may have felt some of the hype about the new Alien versus Predator [a.k.a. A.V.P.] movie that was just released to theaters, but have you heard of Predator’s Nintendo Entertainment System video game? I bet you haven’t. In 1987, Twentieth Century Fox felt it would be necessary to release a video game based on their hit movie in hopes to draw children into this ever growing franchise. Well, aside from the game’s popularity the characters still stand the test of time.

About an hour ago, I was looking through my NES rom collection in hopes to find some clues on how to write my own NES coding for future reference by reading public domain scripts and original hacks. Opening the “P” folder, I expected to see games like Pac-man and Paperboy, but never in a million years would I have expected The Predator. I just had to quit my journey for public domain’s and play this game. Not quite optimistic on its game play (imagining Platoon’s platform), I only anticipated a great introduction…and that’s just what I got.

After seeing the introduction, I wanted to murder that alien bastard! Invade my Earth will ya?! HUH! I’ll get Schwarzenegger after you! Now, for those of you who don’t know the back story for Predator, I’m going to explain to you what it’s all about…or at least what I have learned from the game, since I fell asleep in the middle of the movie.

Major “Dutch” Schaefer [Schwarzenegger] and his merry men of wrestlers fly deep into the jungle to rescue their allies, who are being held by evil guerillas. Jesse Ventura spits tobacco and calls everyone a pussy as they land their helicopter.

They find the guerillas’ quarters, and break out into a fight until the screen shot above became full of fire only revealing black silhouettes. Finally, Dutch’s men succeed in defeating the evil guerillas. But on their way back home, each of his men is killed…one after the other by an unknown creature.

Even Jesse Ventura dies! Though, he resurrects and was elected governor of Minnesota in '95.

Only Dutch survives and ends up fighting the creature, alone. Dutch later became governor of California.

What the hell is this?! No jungle, no bushes, nothing. I had to fight bubbles with my trusty machine gun that shot straws. At this point I was going to eject the game and proceed with the rest of the night but I promised myself that I at least try and attempt to beat the first stage. So, that’s just what I did.

Since the bubbles lessened and the stage scrolled faster, I assumed that I was nearing the end…perhaps a boss would emerge. Imagining the boss to be a giant bubble, or Jesse Ventura spitting tobacco as an attack, seeing that it was the Predator himself was very impressive. Oh no, wait…they had to make it cheesy.

The Predator’s only strategy as a boss was to throw four heads at me and vanish into the background…repeat and rinse. This being one of the easiest bosses I have ever faced in all my video game years, I sort of laughed when I beat him. I’m pretty sure I even cursed the game for being a waste of programmers’ time.

Overall the game play is disgusting; the graphics (besides the introduction) is appalling and the enemies remind me of a poorly hacked rom. Out of a possible 4 I give The Predator…a ZERO!

-eep!

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Well how the hell ELSE are you going to kill a bubble??? SEE? You go ahead and poke fun...but next time you're up against a swarm of vicious bubbles, you're going to *wish* you had those straws, man.:D Great article, by the way.

You should play the Predator for the Commadore 64, it was much better. Dutch actually fights soldiers for the first two rounds and in the last two round he has to figure out how to kill the Predator. Its more of a single player Double Dragon type game than a platformer.

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